Back to School, Back to School

Oz word of the day: Prawn

I'm not sure why Americans think they're cool when they say "shrimp on the barbie", thinking that they're using cool Aussie slang, because shrimp is rarely used in general convo. As spoken by the Aussie guy we met at the grills at Coogee beach last night, "what's shrimp?"

Instead, we should be saying, "throw some more prawns on the barbie", because prawns are shrimp!

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Had my first day of class today, and it didn't even start until 4:30 pm! We have two classes this short, 7 week semester, and my class today was Australian Wine Industry- from 4:30-8:30pm!
It wasn't bad, and it seems like it's going to be a great, informative, and interesting class! Tomorrow we're going to visit some local wine cellars to taste test a few wines and speak with a few wine experts!

Before class today, since I had time to spare, my roommates and I walked around Chinatown and found a garden called the "Chinese Garden of Friendship", which was created to celebrate the friendship between China and New South Wales, Aus. The garden was great, and there were huge ponds with gigantic Coy fish. I also saw a few huge lizards that scared me half to death! The largest crawled up to the gazebo we had stopped for photo ops. on and just sat on a rock watching us. I think he was about 2 feet long! I've never seen a Lizard outside of a zoo- I am from VT :)

We ended the day with Jasmine tea in the tea garden with a plate of Scones and Jam and another plate of Dim-Sums, which reminded me of dumplings. Very delicious.

All in all it was a good day- wonderful to see the contrasting city and garden environments. I look forward to experiencing that more as I'll hopefully spend some time in Vineyards this semester!
Lots of Love!